Apple quietly introduced code into iOS 18.1 which reboots the device if it has not been unlocked for a period of time, reverting it to a state which improves the security of iPhones overall and is making it harder for police to break into the devices, according to multiple iPhone security experts.
On Thursday, 404 Media reported that law enforcement officials were freaking out that iPhones which had been stored for examination were mysteriously rebooting themselves. At the time the cause was unclear, with the officials only able to speculate why they were being locked out of the devices. Now a day later, the potential reason why is coming into view.
“Apple indeed added a feature called ‘inactivity reboot’ in iOS 18.1.,” Dr.-Ing. Jiska Classen, a research group leader at the Hasso Plattner Institute, tweeted after 404 Media published on Thursday along with screenshots that they presented as the relevant pieces of code.
When you consider the price of a used android (ie. Oneplus 6T for $80 on ebay) and compare it spec for spec with a raspberry pi, it’s actually a really good deal. Like you get:
The way I set mine up is to run the server directly on Android using Termux, having an app autostart Termux on boot, and making sure to disable battery optimizations on the app. And then I just had the phone always plugged into the outlet to maintain the battery (and of course android would just trickle charge / disable once full charged).
Of course this isn’t perfect because you still have much more variability in play (at the OS level) than an RPi (along with not having a standard environment like debian unless you use proot), but it overall is a very powerful setup that works quite well.